The Anecdote File

From the Memphis Commercial Appeal:

It is a small, green cardboard box, about the size of shoebox, its corners frayed and lid tattered. The cursive marker scribble on top is fading, and doesn't mean anything unless you know the box's provenance: "Mss 178," it says. "Box 51a. Anecdote file." The box's home is on the fourth floor of the University of Memphis' library, in special collections, among a trove of items collected by the Memphis Search for Meaning Committee following the April 4, 1968, assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Inside the box are notecards, numbered 1 to 347, and on them are typed, according to the archive's notes, "a collection of comments, overheard remarks, 'sick jokes,' eyewitness reports of incidents and first-person accounts of experiences that occurred before, during or soon after the period we are documenting."